EXCERPT

IN THE MORNING the pack stirred early and got ready to head out. Wolf had returned to the cave late in the night to find a warm spot among the curled sleeping bodies. The uneasy feeling about yesterday was mostly gone and he was eager to be up and running.

Just a moment, Alpha said to Wolf as he trotted past her with several pups following.

Wolf halted and hurried back to her, his tail wagging happily. It stopped wagging when he saw the unquiet look in her eyes.

What is it? What can I do?

Alpha took a deep breath and looked away.

Beta came up and stood beside Alpha.

Tell him, Beta said.

Tell me what?

Listen, Alpha said.  I know you see it as well as the rest of us. There are too many of us, and not enough food to go around. This wasn’t an easy decision, but it had to be made. Someone had to be chosen.

And that someone is you, Beta said.

Chosen for what?

You’re out, Beta said.

No, you can’t mean that, Wolf said. That’s not fair.

It’s never fair, Alpha said.

Now Wolf understood why Beta had picked a fight with him, and why there had been so many other serious contests in the last few days. The higher-ups had been making assessments to decide who was essential and who wasn’t.

Beta had let him win that fight, he realized. He’d given him a chance at a throat kill, to see if he had what it took to help keep the pack alive in tough times.

He’d failed the test.

Let me stay, Wolf said. I won’t eat much. I promise. I’ll hunt better. I’ll fight better. Let me stay with you.

To his own distress he heard himself whimpering like a puppy.

You know I can’t allow that, Alpha said. This is how it has to be.

That’s right, said Beta, and the look in his eyes was cold and deadly. It’s nothing personal, just pack business. Now fuck off.

***

Snarls, snapping, and a couple of painful bites were necessary before Wolf finally accepted what was happening and slunk away with his tail drooping.

He watched from a desolate patch of tangled dry scrub willow as the pack trotted up the bare rocky hill above the old cave and into the neighboring valley. At the top of the rise some of the pups hung back, watching him, yipping anxiously, calling their favourite older brother to hurry up and come along. When he didn’t move they turned and toddled after the grown-ups and out of sight.

He was alone.

***

His meals over the next seven days consisted of one mouse, one pocket gopher, and a few scraps of scaly skin and tiny vertebrae, all that was left from a fish that a bear had caught in the creek and devoured on the shore. He even tried eating some grass, like the prey animals did. An hour later he threw it all up.

He couldn’t hope to bring down large prey without the rest of the pack.

Without the pack, he might not even be a wolf anymore.

So what did that make him?

***

His wanderings brought him back to the shore of the lake. Smoke was ghosting over the water from the camp of the new animals. Smoke that was rich with the scent of food.

Real food.

***

The animal was young. That much Wolf could tell from a quick glance and a sniff.

It was hunched on a large flat-topped rock, so still that Wolf hadn’t seen it when he’d come nosing around for cast-off bones. He’d thought it was just another rock. Then he’d caught the scent and saw it.

Wolf darted away to what felt like a safe distance. The animal didn’t chase after him and didn’t hurtle any of those deadly longteeth. It just sat there on the rock, not even looking at Wolf, as if it couldn’t care less what he did next. 

There was a wonderful bone lying at the foot of the rock, though. One that was still mostly wrapped in raw, bloody, gloriously juicy meat. The young animal had maybe dropped the bone by accident, or didn’t even know it was there.

Either way, the animal was too close for comfort.

Wolf trotted away.

***

He came back the next morning.

The young animal wasn’t sitting on the flat rock.

But the bone was still there.

Wolf took it and ran.

***

The following morning Wolf returned, just to see.

The young animal was sitting on the rock. And there was another of those wonderful meaty unburned bones just below it, lying on the sand.

Wolf inched closer, nearly crawling on his belly. He licked his lips.

Hello, said the animal, looking right at Wolf.

Wolf fled.